Whether the Boulder City Council's planned three-day trip to Portland, Ore., falls under the auspices of Colorado's Open Meetings Law depends on how closely it is tied to the council's policy-making function.

In an opinion released on Hotline, the council's public email system, City Attorney Tom Carr argued that the City Council can engage in informational meetings, even with a quorum of the council in attendance, without violating Open Meetings Law.

"The Colorado Open Meetings Law does include a very broad definition of what constitutes a meeting," Carr wrote. "The Supreme Court has, however, construed a meeting to be limited to meetings that involve the policy-making function of the legislative body."

The district court found in favor of the commissioners. The Court of Appeals disagreed and said the plain language of the Open Meetings Law defined the gathering as a meeting. However, the Colorado Supreme Court sided with the commissioners and the district court.

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"The Court held that because the meeting was merely to gather information and not directly related to policy-making, it was not subject to the Open Meetings Act," Carr wrote.

But Chris Beall, an attorney with Levine, Sullivan, Koch and Schulz who represents the Colorado Press Association and the Daily Camera, said he doesn't believe Carr is correctly interpreting the entirety of the ruling.

"The basis for the court's ruling in Costilla County that the county commission had not violated the COML was that there was no showing that the information that the commissioners received at the Hideaway Restaurant was connected to a 'policy-making function' of the commission," he wrote in an email. "The fact that the commissioners were only 'receiving information' was immaterial. The dispositive point was that the information they received had nothing to do with a decision they were then, or would in the future, consider."

Beall said he doesn't believe the same distinction can be made in the case of the trip to Portland, where city officials have said they want to learn about efforts in that city related to bike networks, regional transportation, homelessness and affordable housing to see if any of Portland's solutions can help Boulder.

"The information concerning Portland's bike system that the council members will be gathering is directly related to the council's decisions regarding Boulder's bike system," he wrote. "Hence, if more than two council members gather together to receive such information, then that collection of council members is a 'meeting,' and it is subject to the COML's requirements."

Five council members — Mayor Suzanne Jones and members Matt Appelbaum, Aaron Brockett, Jan Burton and Andrew Shoemaker — plan to make the trip, scheduled for April 24 to 27, with City Manager Jane Brautigam and other top city officials. The idea for the trip originated with Downtown Boulder Inc. and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. A group of business leaders is going to Portland as well, and the first day of the trip includes meetings organized by Downtown Boulder and the Chamber. Both delegations are staying at the same hotel.

While Beall believes the Open Meetings Law applies, those requirements only go so far in providing access for citizens. The meeting must be formally noticed and open to the public, "but beyond that, it's a question of good practices and politics," he said in an interview.

The statute doesn't bar city officials from holding meetings outside the city or county, and it doesn't require the city to facilitate travel to Portland or provide a way for people to listen in on meetings from afar.

The Daily Camera plans to send a reporter on the trip. The city also has said it will provide several scholarships for citizen participants, and Brockett suggested the city take advantage of technology, like Periscope, to stream some of the meetings online.

City of Boulder attorney Tom Carr, at left, talks with Kathy Haddock, Senior Assistant City attorney, during a court hearing in January 2015. Carr says that the Boulder City Council can engage in informational meetings, even with a quorum of the council in attendance, without violating Open Meetings Law (Jeremy Papasso / Daily Camera)

Beall said the most straightforward way to deal with open meetings concerns while still taking advantage of a learning opportunity in Portland is to send two members of council who will report back to the rest. The City Council typically appoints two members to subcommittees working on specific issues, and when city attorneys need to share confidential information with members, they meet in groups of two.

Carr said his legal opinion would be the same if members of the City Council were meeting with business leaders or community members locally. When more than two council members attend a meeting put on by a community group, they aren't violating Open Meetings Law, even if the meeting deals with a matter before the council. It also wouldn't be a violation for three or four or more council members to meet with a business leader or head of a non-profit, provided they didn't discuss a contract or formal matter that person or group had before the city, he said.

City Council members also sometimes take group tours in Boulder, such as a tour of recently constructed buildings to inform a discussion of design guidelines and a tour of Boulder Community Health's Broadway campus when the city was weighing the purchase of the property.

Boulder has traditionally noticed such meetings, and members of the public can and do attend. Carr said in his opinion, many of these tours would not have to be public meetings under the law, though the hospital tour probably would be, given the purchase was pending at the time.

"That's kind of belt and suspenders," he said. "We notice those because we have a history of transparency, and it's not 100 percent clear (whether open meetings applies)."

Carr said he sees no problem with council members discussing what they do and don't like about what they see in Portland. Where conversation would cross the line would be if they start talking about potential ordinances, he said.

Nonetheless, the city probably will notice the meeting, he said, even though to do so "values form over substance."

"We try to follow the letter and the spirit of the law," he said.

Jeffrey Roberts, executive director of the Freedom of Information Coalition, said that while the trip may fall into a gray area, council members should do everything they can to include the public, whether by setting up conference calls, streaming portions of the trip or other measures.

"There is a reasonableness factor and probably members should be able to go gather information in another city to see how they're doing things," he said. "But in terms of discussing what they would like to see in Boulder, they need to be really careful about that. And if they do that, they need to find a way to involve people."

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